I suppose today is a good time to restart the notes of the Great Adventure as today was the day I signed papers accepting the offer for the house. Somehow like so many things I had imagined it differently, maybe more emotional, maybe sad, but it was neither, actually it was nothing, I simply signed a few papers, briefly discussed the days to come with my realtor and went to meet a friend for lunch. Maybe it’s like that old Peggy Lee song “Is that all there is?”

It’s essentially the first of September and 27 years to the day from when I arrived in Texas to begin this chapter of my life, and now the book is closing with more than half my life spent here in Texas, the place where Chris and I found home, yet it’s time to move on at least for a time to a new place which will be very different indeed.

During this time it’s very hard to be productive, so many things are packed and not where they’ve “always” been so you have to make do with substitute plans, or in the morning I’ll have to go to Home Depot and buy 8 lag bolts for storage shelves when I probably have dozens of bolts, but buried somewhere in the storage area.

For months now there is a subtle knowledge that soon you will leave this time and place and as you drive around it may be the last time you’ll see a place, certainly as it is now because of growth. Rolling wooded canyons will soon become blighted housing tracts, paved over with shopping centers and the essence of what has made it the unique Hill Country of Texas will be bulldozed and homogenized into the Chili’s, Sears and Gap’s of the generation – or, you may never see this place again at all, so you try to imprint images as they are now, as they have always been these last 22 years and yes, as Chris knew them. Now that a specific date is imminent and there are only 20 days left it becomes more and more a conscious act to try somehow capture the essence of each day left in this place.

So, maybe there is emotion here, just hidden in and under all the other things happening now.